Study: IE9 beats out Firefox as fastest Windows browser

Web performance tracker New Relic has revealed that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 is not only the most used browser on Windows operating systems, but also the fastest. Not too shocking, all things considered. That’s not to say it’s the fastest browser across the board, however.

Image: New Relic

According to New Relic, IE holds 40 percent of the overall browser market on Windows and its latest version IE9 loads in just three seconds. New versions of Firefox and Chrome are tied for second in speediness at 3.5 seconds. In terms of popularity, however, Google’s browser enjoys a 33 percent share of the market while Mozilla’s sits at 24 percent.

On the Apple side, the company claims browser speeds on Macs are generally around one second quicker than on PCs. Chrome, again, leads the way here with an average load time of 2.5 seconds. Safari isn’t far behind at 2.7 seconds, followed by Firefox’s 2.8 seconds.

But how is the performance tracker arriving at these results? Numbers. Lots of numbers, courtesy of its Real User Monitoring system.

“We are currently monitoring about 750 million page views a day, 5 billion a week and 20 billion a month for 20,000 active accounts,” the site explained. “Our real user monitoring Javascript is found on over 150,000 unique domains on the internet. This puts us in the unique position of being able to comment credibly on the state of web performance from the end user perspective.”

New Relic claims browsing speeds across the board have improved, with an average of .5 seconds shaved since 2011.

“We are currently monitoring about 750 million page views a day, 5 billion a week and 20 billion a month for 20,000 active accounts,” the site explained. “Our real user monitoring Javascript is found on over 150,000 unique domains on the internet. This puts us in the unique position of being able to comment credibly on the state of web performance from the end user perspective.”

Wait, so only 20,000 active accounts? Isn't the population of the world over 5 Billions .. that is in Billions and they only used 20,000 active accounts? So what are those active accounts? I highly doubt they really give a accurate estimation of the browser usage. Also they don't specify if IE9 was the only available browser on those accounts or not or if those user had the ability to use other browser of their own free choice??

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But how is the performance tracker arriving at these results? Numbers. Lots of numbers, courtesy of its Real User Monitoring system.

Lots of number don't mean much when your only using 20,000 accounts to get all your numbers from....??? Also they seem like a company for hire to do number crunching and that itself makes me wonder whom are they favoring and whom is paying them to do this research???

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I don’t know what domains New Relic’s Javscript runs on, but it seems reasonable to assume that these results are highly North America-centric. Any further data on the geographic breakdown of the browsers would be interesting.

I like to know those further breakdown as well. And since they provide little to know what it all came from the claims are hard to acknowledge how it was done. More need to be known about the test and hardware used to do that got such results. And with any kinda test can be to fit one criteria and leave others out as well.

I don't like IE because it doesn't have ad-block plus. I don't like Chrome because it doesn't have an easily accessible bookmarks button. I found an add-on that does it, but the bookmarks aren't nearly as well setup as firefox (or IE for that matter).

"IE9 beats out Firefox as fastest Windows browser"
In other words, black hats should target IE9 as it is more popular and exploits have better performance.

I think they already do that....just because it is so integrated in the O/S it would be a easy target to phish and break the IE and then jump to the user O/S and take over and make the user computer a BotNet.

People mainly use Firefox not because its faster, not because its more secure, but because its "anything other than Microsoft".

say anything nice about M$ and see the venom well to the surface.

Frankly, hating M$ is currently the only valid reason to use FF.

Lack of bookmarks management is THE reason I will not use Chrome

And if a computer comes into my shop with Opera I will NOT allow it to connect to the web via my connection until I have plucked out Opera root & Vine.

Why? Opera aparrently has torrent features.
last time a computer with Opera was here I got a nasty gram from my ISP about sharing the movie 128hours, a Movie I don't have and certainly wouldn't have a digital copy of...

And if a computer comes into my shop with Opera I will NOT allow it to connect to the web via my connection until I have plucked out Opera root & Vine.

Why? Opera aparrently has torrent features.
last time a computer with Opera was here I got a nasty gram from my ISP about sharing the movie 128hours, a Movie I don't have and certainly wouldn't have a digital copy of...

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I think Firefox does plugins much better then IE. The big reason i use FF is the adblock plus plugin. I also use a few other plugs. IE has never been great at implementing that sort of thing. Chrome can do it, but as you mentioned Chrome is awful with bookmarks. For me FF is the only one that handles plugins and bookmarks well making it the winner.

IE isn't the fastest on my computer ,Firefox seem faster.Maybe because my computer is old or the programs on my computer conflict with IE ,many factors should be considered in naming the fastest browser plus features that they both offer.The truth here is the only reason I have IE on my tube is it 's MS which operate most programs and setting up windows.

who gives a rats ass which browser loads the quickest?
with ssds & hybrid drives common, load times are negligible and webpage recall is king!
at last count, my Firefox install has 20+ tabs open and on a 2yr old hybrid drive loads everything in 5 seconds, inclusive of recall of the active tab.

@cdan: totally correct, I use it because it's not Microsoft. given that most I.T. illiterates use whatever is installed by default, it's the prime hacking candidate because it has the largest target, and in the event that they are hacked, it's unlikely they'd notice or know what do to do about it anyway.